Empirical Study of a 3D Visualization for Information Retrieval Tasks

Empirical Study of a 3D Visualization for Information Retrieval Tasks Advisor : Dr. Hsu Graduate : Jing Wei Lin Authors :Gregory B.NEWBY 2002.IIS.23 .

Outline • Motivation • Objective • Introduction • Methodology • Results • Conclusion • Personal Opinions

Motivate • There are many challenges to visualizing information including choosing between 2D and 3D interfaces, navigation and interaction methods, and selecting an appropriate level of detail.

Objective • This paper provides • An experimental evaluation of a prototype interface for visualizing IR results is described. • Anoverview of more than three decades of work on information visualization, identifying several trends and somerelatively unexplored areas.

Introduction • Yavi is a prototype 3D application for exploration of an information space where similarity relations amongterms and documents may be viewed, and documents may be retrieved. Information Space Select terms Get closest Document

Methodology • After training, respondents were given a packet of instructions and survey forms for completion at their leisure. • Respondents needed to use two separate Information Spaces to complete tasks and answer questions about the information spaces and Yavi in general. • Cognitive tests： • The card rotation test • The map-planning test • The tasks： • Both tasks involved navigating an Information Space, performing some basic system functions with the space, and answering questions about it. • Limitations and bias： • The number of terms and documents presented by Yavi is not nearly so great as for a real-word information retrieval system.

Experimental Results • Can respondents judge distance accurately ? • These results indicate that judging inter-pair distances is especially difficult. • Respondents were able to identify items close to the center (once they rotated the space) • Are the information spaces consistent with respondent perceptions ?whether you think the “distance” between the courses is an accurate representation？ • COURSE Task1~5; TREC Task2~4 • Did respondents think they were able to use Yavi ? • All 15 respondents were in fact able to utilize the system for all its available functions: moving through the space, choosing various options, and selecting terms and viewing documents. • Do cognitive test scores matter ? • Visual inspection of the data indicates that card rotation test scores may be positively related to the perceived usefulness of Yavi

Conclusion • The extent to which Yavi is actually effective for IR, either as a tool for selecting terms and retrieving documents, as a facilitator for browsing search results, or another purpose, was only assessed indirectly through responses to open ended questionnaire items. • Specific points for development, as suggested by the research, include: • Limiting rotation, especially about the Y axis, to lessen disorientation; • Enabling viewing of relationships beyond similarity, e.g., by selecting a document and seeing all terms in it; • De-emphasizing keystroke commands in favor of on-screen heads-up menus or pull-down menus;

Personal Opinions • Advantage： • 提供了很多在視覺化呈現資訊的文獻探討 • 利用任務型的評估方式 • Drawback： • 沒有做問卷的信、效度分析

Addition

Empirical Study of a 3D Visualization for Information Retrieval Tasks